


Looking for a Different Kind of Ordinary

by The_Dancing_Walrus



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Brother-Sister Relationships, Complicated Relationships, Dysfunctional Family, F/F, Lena Luthor Knows Kara Danvers Is Supergirl, Light Dom/sub, also there's Mississippi Goddamn, and it makes things complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 05:59:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8957518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Dancing_Walrus/pseuds/The_Dancing_Walrus
Summary: 'She cries a lot after she finds out.Not in front of Kara, God no, she is a Luthor after all. And whether she likes it or not she has a lot more in common with her brother than a last name and mediocre parents.'In which Kara comes out, Lena has a crisis of faith or three and neither of them are bound by their family legacy.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to RedHead and DragonTail for reading this over and persuading me it didn't suck.
> 
> Oh also I have a tumblr- https://www.tumblr.com/blog/thedancingwalrus-blog

She cries a lot after she finds out.

 

Not in front of Kara, God no, she _is_ a Luthor after all. And whether she likes it or not she has a lot more in common with her brother than a last name and mediocre parents.

 

So for Kara she stays calm, keeps her voice level even if it’s cold. She makes it through her day with a neutral expression, a little distracted perhaps but she says all the right things to her employees and smiles at all the right places for board members.

 

She doesn’t break down until she’s alone.

 

She gets home, takes off her shoes. Her phone pings something about Wayne Industries share prices and she drops it on a side table without really looking. She goes straight to the drinks cabinet and gets out the scotch, pours four fingers and thinks that it was Lex who taught her how to appreciate-

 

She knocks it back, considers pouring another but ends up just taking the bottle.

 

It’s only when she’s made it across the room and curled up on the couch that she starts to cry.

 

It’s so stupid- _she’s_ so stupid-

 

And crying about it feels ridiculously indulgent because _of course_ Kara lied to her, she’s a _Luthor_ -

 

It doesn’t make it hurt less. She thinks, vaguely, about whether that alien detector prototype doesn’t work after all or whether Kara did something to it while Lena wasn’t paying attention. She thinks about Kara’s nervous little smile and her awful clunky glasses and her earnest, honest way of talking and _Kara lied_ -

 

Lena breathes in around the stone in her throat. Her make up must be utterly ruined.

 

There should be someone she could call and the first person she thinks of is Kara. The second person-

 

Oh God.

 

She has another drink and tries not to think what calling Lex would be like.

 

It’s stupid to think about it anyway. They only really take phone calls at particular times and it’s far too late in the evening to be able to talk to anyone on cell block X.

 

She closes her eyes and remembers how he’d listened to her cry over the phone the first time she’d had a broken heart. He’d told her she was brilliant and beautiful and if Isabelle Matthews couldn’t see that then Lena was better off without her. He’d shouted all the things she’d wanted to but couldn’t when Alice White’s parents had complained she’d _corrupted_ their daughter. He’d supported her in a million tiny, dumb, _important_ ways.

 

And then he’d gone crazy and battered everything good about himself to death. As if he could use it all to bludgeon Superman. And she’d tried to talk to him but-

 

The only thing stupider than crying about _Kara Danvers_ is crying about Lex. There isn’t any point punishing herself because _he changed_. Lena knows that.

 

She still doesn’t have anyone to call. Now it feels like there are two gaps in her heart, the one where her brother should be and the one where her _girlfriend_ should be.

 

And crying isn’t going to fill either of them.

 

She takes a swig of two hundred dollar scotch straight from the bottle and wipes her ruined make up on the sleeve of her designer jacket. She ends up falling asleep on the couch.

 

-

 

She’s stiff when she wakes up and her head feels like she’s gone a round in Roulette’s ridiculous ring. She might be sick, she hasn’t quite decided yet.

 

She sits up and her foot catches the bottle of scotch, knocks it over. Thankfully she had the presence of mind to put the top back on properly. She stares at the cobalt polish on her toenails for a while. Her feet feel cold and very far away. She tries to use them anyway, staggers and _no_ she is not going to be sick. She has decided not to be.

 

She makes it back into the hall. The phone is blinking from the side table she left it on last night. She picks it up and pokes it until it makes sense-

 

Missed calls, text messages, some of them are from various members of her company but a lot of them are from Kara.

 

She tells her PA that she has food poisoning, which is _technically_ true if you accept that scotch is a food stuff and also poisonous in large enough quantities.

 

She stares at Kara’s name on the screen, not entirely sure she wants to know what Miss Danvers has to say. She isn’t sure what she wants to say to Kara either. Or rather she’s not sure what she _should_ say. There are a lot of things she’d like to now while everything still hurts and she can blame the scotch for not quite thinking it through.

 

 _Why didn’t you say something sooner?_ Well obviously that’s because Lena’s surname isn’t _Smith._

 

 _Did you ever tell me the truth?_ Unfair. If it was anything more ordinary Lena wouldn’t even be thinking that. She doesn’t have any right to demand personal details from the people around her, just like her board members don’t have any right to know who she takes out for dinner on the weekends.

 

 _I’m not my brother_. Probably the main reason this is so painful. It feels like she’s spent half her life now bending over backwards to prove that she’s her own person. But then again if Kara thought she was anything like Lex they wouldn’t be in this situation would they?

 

 _Are you leading me on?_ Unlikely if she’s prepared to tell Lena this. That implies that….

 

This is serious.

 

Lena frowns at her phone and thumbs quickly through the list of texts and missed calls. The volume of them does seem to support that theory.

 

This is serious.

 

God.

 

She’s not really sure how to- It seems ridiculous but-

 

Her mind stutters around the fact that she’s apparently fallen into a serious relationship with _Supergirl_ and how would they even- is it actually remotely possible for- but she’s _an alien-_

 

Lena closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Her brother is actually going to kill her.

 

And her brain just won’t stop prodding the question of whether they could actually _do_ anything. It’s fortunate she’s sobered up enough to know ‘ _are we compatible?’_ is not a good thing to text anyone.

 

She stares at her phone. The backlighting is making the letters blur a little. She should really text Kara.

 

She doesn’t really know what to say.

 

 _Are you sure?_ Of course Kara is, she’s _Supergirl_.

 

 _Why me?_ Lena isn’t sure she really wants the answer to that-

 

They should probably talk about…everything. She starts texting an invitation to come over but really she’s in no state for anything that taxing and she certainly looks like a mess and-

 

She breathes.

 

In the end she types ‘ _I need some time to take stock.’_ Which is perfectly true.

 

After a moment’s thought she adds ‘ _I’ll call you in a few days.’_ Hopefully by that point she’ll be at least marginally presentable and less likely to make a fool of herself. She’ll get something to eat, something for her head, clean herself up and think about….all of this. There’s no point talking to Kara before she knows what she wants.

 

Lena manages most of it, eventually. But she also spends a large portion of her day looking at photos and youtube clips of Supergirl.

 

She wonders if that means she’ll have FBI agents following her in to work tomorrow.

 

It’s certainly possible-

 

But she just can’t seem to stop.

 

-

 

It’s five days before Lena plucks up the nerve to see Kara. She can’t quite shake the feeling that it’s going to backfire somehow. Even though she’s had quite a bit of time to think about what she wants to say.

 

It’s difficult not to feel as though she’s on the back foot as soon as Kara walks in. Even though they’re in Lena’s office, her territory, her seat of power.

 

Kara still looks…like Kara. A little bit nervous, a little bit shy. Lena’s not sure what she expected to be different. Her own perception perhaps. She might be afraid of Supergirl but Kara is still Kara. That’s probably a good sign.

 

She starts by apologising, explaining that she needed some time to think-

 

“Are you breaking up with me?” Kara blurts out.

 

“No.” Lena states and Kara sags, relieved.

 

“OK. Good,” Kara says with a sigh. “Are you-Do you want to like go out somewhere or- Because I feel like we haven’t really- And I understand that you needed time and that’s absolutely fine but maybe we could- I umm mean I could take you anywhere literally _anywhere_ , I mean I can fly and-”

 

“I have a jet.” Lena counters smoothly. “So can I.”

 

Kara’s mouth opens and closes as if she’s not quite sure what to do with it. She looks at the floor and her shoulders hunch and that is really not what Lena had been aiming for at all.

 

She gets up and walks as close to Kara as she dares. It’s strange looking at her now, because it is just glasses and a pony tail and a comfortable jumper but Kara Danvers looks harmless in a way Supergirl definitely doesn’t.

 

It helps Lena get close enough to look her in the eye.

 

“I am not dating Supergirl.” Lena states.

 

“But you just said-” Kara protests.

 

“ _You_ are dating Lena Luthor.”

 

She pauses just long enough to see if Kara has anything to say but Kara doesn’t really seem to.

 

“You are _not_ going to whisk me away. You are not going to go out of your way to impress me. I am going to impress you.”

 

Kara’s throat moves and after a moment she closes her mouth. Lena smiles. She tucks an errant strand of hair back behind Kara’s ear and steps away.

 

“Do you have any plans for Friday evening?” Lena enquires and she’s proud of how casual it sounds, how effortless.

 

As if there’s absolutely no possibility of the vision in front of her changing her mind.

 

“Umm no.” Kara says just the right side of nervous. “No I don’t think so.”

 

“Excellent.” Lena replies. “I’ll make the arrangements.”

 

She wonders if Kara will spend the rest of the day thinking about it as well.

 

-

 

She gets a text from Kara around lunch time asking what she’s got in mind for the evening. Lena smiles at the view out the window, by the time Kara’s off work the sun will have mostly set and the smattering of cloud cover should turn the sky pink and gold. Out across the harbour the water is a beautiful, delicate blue, clear as a gem.

 

She answers with a string of numbers and waits for Kara to take the bait.

 

‘Are those GPS coordinates?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

Lena waits, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes for Kara to-

 

‘You’re in the Caribbean?!’

 

‘I thought you’d like somewhere a little quieter.’ Lena replies. ‘But if you’d prefer Brazil I know a lovely place in Salvador.’

 

There’s a longer wait for the next message and Lena isn’t entirely sure how it might play out. She _could_ probably get to Salvador in time, if she cancels the last meeting with their managers in Barbados-

 

‘No that’s ok. Did you want me to…’

 

Lena isn’t entirely sure what the dots signify. Presumably something to do with Supergirl rather than mild mannered Kara Danvers.

 

‘It’s a private beach. Dinner. Drinks. I’d suggest casual dress. You can make your own way over I assume?’

 

It takes more self control than Lena would like to resist the urge to ask Kara to fly.

 

-

 

Kara doesn’t land at Lena’s side the way Lena had been half-hoping she would. She tries not to be disappointed. Instead Kara walks in from the other end of the beach, the part that ends in a cliff face. Her shoes aren’t quite suitable for the sand, she has a pale green dress in the same sort of cute, cheerful cut she wore to Lena’s Gala. She put her hair up but didn’t bother with the glasses and Lena wonders if that’s practicality or putting aside concerns for her identity.

 

“Hi.” She gives Lena a bright smile that makes Lena’s stomach flip.

 

“Hi.”

 

There’s an awkward pause that makes Lena want to fidget and Kara actually do it.

 

“Um-” Kara begins.

 

“Have you ever had an old fashioned punch before?”

 

“I can’t really get drunk.” Kara admits.

 

“Do you have taste buds?” Lena asks, a little teasing “Then you should try one. The bar’s this way.”

 

It’s a small open structure a little way back from the sand with a good view out across the ocean. On a clear night like tonight other islands are visible, some closer some further away. Lena wonders how much of them Kara can see while she makes their drinks. The sea and the sky are both a beautiful deep blue, turning to tanzanite as the last flecks of red fade with the sun.

 

“It’s beautiful.” Kara murmurs as she takes the cocktail and Lena agrees.

 

They learn to talk to each other again and it’s not as stilted as Lena feared. Kara’s never been scuba diving and she’s never seen whales. She talks for a little while about going up with her father in shuttles, watching parts of the universe the way you’d watch fish under a glass bottomed boat.

 

Kara doesn’t like old fashioned punch much so Lena makes pina coladas next. Proper pina coladas.

 

Kara’s face lights up when she tries it. She’s generous as always with her praise-

 

“Where did you learn how to do this?” She asks, mid flow and Lena shrugs, smiles, looks away-

 

They get dinner at the bar and talk for hours.

 

Lena never tells her that it’s her brother’s cocktail recipe.

 

-

 

Kara tells her that there’s a bar in National that’s mostly aliens but Lena’s quite sure they wouldn’t want a Luthor there.

 

And she’s not sure how she’d react, to all those people built so differently to her. She can cope with Kara, mostly, Kara looks the same. She doesn’t want Kara to be disappointed in her so they don’t go to the bar, not yet.

 

They meet once a week or so, at Lena’s beach, on her boat. In places remote enough that Kara can be….whatever she is when she’s not pretending to be either a symbol or one of the people she protects. They spend a few weekends together around the islands acting like ordinary tourists. It’s freeing.

 

It ends three months in with their photograph on the front page of a trashy magazine and then on every gossip website in English-

 

Someone with a camera phone had got a lucky shot, the two of them on a dock near the boat. Kissing.

 

And it would be an ordinary sort of scandal. Lena Luthor with a woman in her life. Except Kara had gotten used to not wearing the glasses on their dates, to letting her hair fall loose-

 

And in the photo her feet don’t touch the ground.

 

-

 

Lena gets a call from her PR manager two hours after it goes up. The first thing she does is phone Kara. She can hear panic in Kara’s voice. Her words start running together and Lena cuts in.

 

“They don’t know who you are.” Lena assures her. “There’s speculation but-”

 

No one would believe that Supergirl might kiss a Luthor.

 

She sighs and the truth is they could try to keep this quiet. Lena could refuse to answer any press questions but that does make it more likely that someone would tap her phone or hack her email account. They’d follow her. They’d look up flight records and it would all mount up to make this tentative, delicate peace she has with Kara buckle and deform. 

 

“They know you’re an alien. They don’t know your name.” Lena spins in her chair to look out over the city.

 

She imagines the unhappy line of Kara’s mouth as listens to shaky breathing over the phone.

 

“OK,” Kara says. “What do you want to do?”

 

Lena blinks at the tower opposite. “What do I want to do?”

 

“You’ve done this before.” Kara points, out which is true. “And I’ve never been in the papers for…something like this.”

 

“If I ignore them they’ll start trying to track you down.” Lena says which is mostly stalling because what she really wants is-

 

“I think-” She swallows the lump in her throat and tells herself Kara can’t tell how nervous she is through the phone line. “I think we should come out.”

 

“Come out as in?”

 

“I’m going to a fundraiser Thursday night,” She’d been planning to do barely more than show up and smile for the cameras before leaving.

 

“Come with me.” Lena instructs. “As Supergirl.”

 

The silence on the other end of the line lasts a long time.

 

“OK.” Kara breathes.

 

-

 

She swoops down out of the clouds and lands at Lena’s side. It feels as if everyone is watching them as Kara takes her hand. They probably are.

 

It’s odd seeing her as Supergirl, as if she isn’t quite Kara anymore. Lena isn’t sure she likes it, having to focus past the red and blue.

 

Kara doesn’t seem quite comfortable either. She keeps fiddling with her hair and her skirt, aware that around the sharp suits and sweeping dresses she looks gauche, out of place. It keeps her by Lena’s side all evening, her hand just a little tight at Lena’s elbow. She seems suddenly shy, leaving Lena to deal with the people around them who all really seem to want to speak to Supergirl.

 

It should aggravate her but it doesn’t. The bright, beautiful woman the whole room wants to be close to is _hers_. Lena Luthor called and Supergirl came down from the sky to hang on her arm, even though there are a thousand other things Kara would probably rather do.

 

She’s doing this because Lena asked.

 

Lena finds it easy to smile through the evening.

 

They steal the show.

 

-

 

“I guess we won’t be going back to the Caribbean much.” Kara says while Lena struggles with her shoes, phone balanced in the crook of her shoulder.

 

“We can if you like. I thought the quiet was part of the appeal.”

 

“They wouldn’t leave us alone would they?” Kara sounds very quiet at that, Lena supposes that she’s been able to keep the press at arms length…

 

“No. They wouldn’t.” She pauses and then gives in to the urge to say, “After Lex was arrested- There was a man who kept breaking in to the place in Antigua and digging up the beach. He thought there was an ‘underground lair’ there.”

 

It’s the first time she’s mentioned her brother. She’s not sure what Kara will say.

 

Kara gives her something halfway to a laugh. “Was there?”

 

“No. Superman checked. But he turned up every other week for about six months with a metal detector anyway.”

 

They talk a little longer before Kara says goodnight and it’s not actually awkward at all.

 

-

 

Photos of Kara, her arm locked with Lena’s appear on the cover of every newspaper Lena bothers to check. The headlines are sometimes less than complimentary so Lena doesn’t read the articles. It feels a little like the fundraiser did, like the whole world can see Kara is with her. Something about that keeps her smiling all day.

 

She gets a furious phone call from Kara at around lunch time which fills her in on which journalists she should hate. She lets Kara fume and it doesn’t sour her mood in the slightest.

 

“How would you feel if I bought a dress for you next time?” Lena asks when Kara pauses for air.

 

“I-what?”

 

“A dress.” Lena repeats, imagining Kara’s stunned expression makes her smile a little wider. “You seemed…uncomfortable last night I thought it might help.”

 

Kara protests (of course she does) and Lena surprises herself by pointing out that she’d be spending Luthor family money on buying _Supergirl_ a nice dress. Kara doesn’t seem to know how to argue against that.

 

-

 

She gets it tailored, mostly because she can. An elegant sweep of silk in indigo and purple. She’s trying to pick a suitable event, one Kara couldn’t say no to, when her phone starts bleeping.

 

It doesn’t stop.

 

Eventually she looks at it. Her mother’s trial date has been set and like her brother’s it’s been rushed through. The preliminary hearing is less than a week-

 

She takes a quick look at her messages, glancing over the names and feeling like her head is filling up with white noise-

 

Lena turns the phone off.

 

-

 

She’s watching the news when Kara lets herself in. Probably from the balcony upstairs. She wonders if Kara likes scotch. It doesn’t seem likely, and there isn’t a lot left.

 

There are stomps on the stairs and a few doors slam impressively before Kara actually finds her. Lena wonders why she bothers stomping when she could fly until Kara plants herself in front of the television, fists on her hips. She looks like she’s squaring off to stop a meteor-

 

“What are you doing?!” And she sounds _horrified-_

 

Lena salutes her with the scotch bottle and raises an eyebrow. God she’s even picked up Lex’s awful, pitch-black drunken humour.

 

Kara’s across the room in an instant and holding the bottle. Lena grasps at empty air. May be Kara took it too fast for her to feel anything, or may be she was about to drop it anyway.

 

“Did you drink all this?” Kara demands.

 

“No.” It was about half full when she started.

 

Kara puts the bottle down out of reach and comes back, lowering herself to Lena’s level. She looks so earnest, so concerned it’s painful.

 

“What are you doing?” Kara asks again. “I called and you didn’t pick up and then your PA said- and you’re at home, _drinking_!”

 

“People do that with alcohol.”

 

“That’s not funny.” Kara snaps and then she trails off, turning just a little towards the tv.

 

Lena figures she’s only just realised what’s on.

 

There’s a sorrowful sort of look on her face when she turns back. The one that makes her eyes huge. Sympathy may be.

 

“Lena-” She says softly.

 

“I’m just wondering,” Lena says, with her head tilted back against the couch so she sees more of the ceiling than Kara. “How long I’ve got before it happens to me.”

 

“It _won’t_.” Kara insists as if it’s something she can stop. “You are _not_ like them. You’re a good person, too good to go down that path.”

 

Her hands are on Lena’s shoulders and all Lena can think is that she doesn’t _understand_. She doesn’t know just how much of Lex there is in Lena’s bones. She straightens her neck, looks at Kara. There’s no good way to say you’re a little bit afraid of someone, and it’s not really true. It’s Kryptonians she’s afraid of not Kara-

 

There’s no way she can see to explain to Kara that Lex is a good person too. One that would do anything to make the world ‘better’.

 

Kara looks worried.

 

“Mississippi goddamn-” Lena murmurs without meaning to.

 

“What?”

 

Lena sighs. Well it was going to end sometime, a Luthor and a ‘Super’. She may as well do it by giving Kara the truth. It will probably make it easier to watch her fly away.

 

Lena pulls herself upright and Kara gives her space. After a bit of flapping about Lena finds the remote for the stereo. She jams some buttons until it starts again.

 

“What-” Kara starts but Lena shushes her.

 

There’s a fast jaunty sort of piano tune coming out of the stereo and in a moment Nina Simone will start singing. Lena knows all the words and she finds herself mouthing them a little bit out of time-

 

Alabama’s got me so upset. Tennessee made me lose my rest. And everybody knows about Mississippi, goddamn-

 

Kara looks even more worried than she did before.

 

“He really liked the civil rights movement you know.” Lena tells her. “He had all these books, this music…”

 

She’s not sure where to start. If she closes her eyes she can see the photos in Lex’s books.

 

“Everyone talks about the schools and the buslines…they wouldn’t let black people in most _hospitals_. In some places people would sneak into vets surgeries for treatment. _Vets-_ ” She’s a little surprised how forceful her tone gets, how passionate she sounds.

 

Just like Lex.

 

Lena takes a deep ragged breath. Through the stereo and a gap of decades Nina sings about jailed school children and a terror as ever present as air. If she shuts her eyes she’ll be twelve again and hiding in her brother’s room from a mother she’ll never be good enough for. Nina Simone will be singing and she’ll soak up a history no one except Lex thinks she needs to know.

 

It’s not the history she needs Kara to understand though, it’s the _lessons_ -

 

“The people in charge didn’t _care._ ” They still don’t but she’s probably too drunk to start getting into that- “You can’t- you can’t trust _them_ to see the right thing let alone do it. You can’t wait for someone else to save you-”

 

Kara looks at her with those big worried eyes and Lena looks away.

 

“They got arrested,” She murmurs to the lampshade. “They were helping people and they got arrested for it. Because doing the right thing was against the law. They _suffered_ and they _didn’t give up_ -”

 

It feels a little like she’s about to let Kara in on a secret, a horrible one. Because-

 

“Lex isn’t mad. He’s doing what he thinks is right. No matter the cost. Even if it’s against the law. He won’t ever give up.”

 

“You’re not Lex.” Kara tells her, forcefully.

 

And Lena shakes her head because-

 

“When it matters, if something really is _wrong_ , you do _everything_ you can to make it right. You don’t ever stop.”

 

“Lena-”

 

“ ** _He taught me that_**.”

 

They fall silent. The song stopped a while ago but Lena can still feel it, Nina’s anger tinting the world a slightly different colour.

 

When she closes her eyes now she can see her first Pride and her brother standing beside her, holding her hand.

 

Kara touches her face and Lena realises with a start that she’s crying.

 

After a while Kara crawls up on the couch with her. Lena grips her shoulder and thinks vaguely that if Kara was human that might bruise.

 

But it doesn’t.

 

“What if one day I decide I know what’s best for…everyone else? What if _I_ get it wrong-”

 

Kara squeezes her. It must take a lot of practice and self control, Lena thinks, learning to do that just right. A little harder and she’d probably break Lena’s ribs. It’s funny that Lena isn’t really scared of that any more.

 

She’s much more afraid of herself. And the fears she had about Kara have twisted around that- just how much would Kara do because Lena asked? She tries not to think too hard about how much she likes the idea of making Kara do things.

 

Kara wriggles in her arms, moves just enough that they’re looking each other in the eye again.

 

“Trust me, if you get it wrong you’ll know.”

 

It seems so simple-

 

And then Kara’s getting up, making noises about putting Lena to bed which is silly because she doesn’t need-

 

The world tilts suddenly and Lena finds herself in Kara’s arms. Kara smiles at her even though she must look like a mess. Eventually Lena smiles back.

 

They float up the stairs. Kara helps her into bed. Before she flies away she leaves a glass of water on the bedside table and a packet of painkillers.

 

When Lena goes downstairs in the morning the mess she left has been cleaned away.

 

-

 

After the scene she left she’s not entirely sure Kara will show up-

 

With her mother in the news nonstop Lena’s not sure she wants to show up either. But she doesn’t want to let Kara down-

 

May be that’s what Kara meant, how she’d know if she got it all wrong-

 

Then she spots Kara, a dot in the sky, and she’s not thinking about ethics anymore. The silk does strange things in the wind. With wild bright silken shapes playing around her and the fabric clinging to her skin she really does look like a goddess.

 

She looks at Lena as if there’s no one else on the ground. And suddenly Lena’s very glad she came.

 

-

 

They start kissing on the balcony as soon as Kara lands. She feels so soft and she yields at Lena’s touch, bending to follow the lips on hers, the fingers on her shoulder and at her hip-

 

There’s something powerful about it, the strongest person on the planet bending around _her_. She leads Kara into the bedroom, Kara who’s wearing the dress Lena picked out for her, who still believes in her even after seeing Lena at her weakest.

 

God she’s so beautiful.

 

Lena guides her to the foot of the bed, drinks in the red of Kara’s lips. She wants to see just how far she can make Kara bend. It feels dangerous and delicious in almost equal measure.

 

“Stay there.” Lena instructs, she doesn’t wait to see if Kara does.

 

There’s a pair of scissors in the bedside table, small and delicate and almost silver. When she turns around Kara is still there, standing at the foot of her bed. Lena smiles.

 

She steps into Kara’s space and watches Kara’s eyes widen. The way they skip between Lena and the shine of the scissors.

 

“You can’t hurt me with those.” Kara says softly.

 

“I know.”

 

“Are you-” Kara swallows. “Are you going to cut my dress off?”

 

“No.” Lena leans closer to breathe the words into Kara’s ear. “You are.”

 

She hands Kara the scissors and turns away. As if she’s got no reason at all to think Kara won’t do exactly what she’s told.

 

She props herself up on the bed, leaving her shoes just beside it and settles back to watch.

 

Kara swallows. And does what she’s told.

 

She looks nervous and the way she moves is jerky, unsure in a way Lena’s never seen before. The strap on her left shoulder goes first, then she falters. But she catches Lena’s eye and she keeps going.

 

Until the dress falls off, full of holes.

 

Kara looks like she might shiver under Lena’s stare.

 

“Hands on your head.”

 

She sways a little on her feet as she does it. Lena crawls over the bed and skims her hands up Kara’s bare sides. There aren’t any scars Lena can see, another small impossible thing to add to the list. She runs her fingers over the front of Kara’s bra and feels a tremor travel through her chest.

 

“Don’t move.”

 

Her hands run lower. They trace a line down the middle of Kara’s torso, over her breast bone, down to her belly button. Lower-

 

She watches the way Kara’s face changes as Lena’s fingers slide past her underwear. The way her body sways and she struggles to keep her hands still, ends up making fists in her hair.

 

Lena smiles.

 

Kara lunges forward, as far as she can without falling on the bed, her mouth soft and open and hungry. Lena leans ever so slightly back.

 

The kiss misses and Kara ends up with her forehead on Lena’s collar bone, groaning into her skin.

 

Lena’s free hand curls gently around her neck and Kara goes still.

 

“I can’t hurt you like this, can I?”

 

“No.” Kara breathes.

 

“Good.”

 

Her fingers tighten enough to pull Kara back upright. So Lena can watch as she takes her apart.

 

It’s…normal. Which sounds like faint praise for something so wonderful, something that makes the last of Lena’s fears fall away.

 

Kara’s eyes drop half closed, her head falls just a little forward. She keeps making small breathy noises, with every movement of Lena’s fingers.

 

Lena traces her labia, the folds of flesh around her clitoris and rubs until Kara comes. She drinks in Kara’s groans, the wild desperate look in her eyes-

 

It finally sinks. She isn’t her brother. And Kara’s not Superman.

 

They don’t have to follow the same dull path their family did.

 

She plants a kiss on Kara’s forehead and moves aside, letting Kara flop face first on to the bed. Kara mumbles something into the sheets and Lena laughs at her.

 

Her underwear comes off slowly since Kara doesn’t seem inclined to help. There’s a line of sweat along her spine, another small, ordinary thing. Lena licks it away, a smooth stripe from the middle of her back up to her neck.

 

Kara shivers.

 

“We’re not done yet.” Lena smiles at her ear.

 

And Kara shivers again.

 

-

 

Their next date isn’t grand openings or exotic trips, no press or moneyed socialites. Kara takes her to a dive bar on the wrong side of town. The one full of aliens.

 

The room falls silent when she walks in, there are stares and whispers.

 

But the black woman behind the bar smiles shyly and in the corner there’s a whole table full of Kara’s friends. Between the last Martian and the son of a serial killer, opposite a cop and a Daxomite, Lena doesn’t feel so strange.

 

They talk, about work and a show Winn likes. They drink cheap beer and dare each other to try things from other worlds that mostly taste as bad as they look. Maggie Sawyer beats them all at pool.

 

And it’s a different kind of ordinary but one that isn’t that scary after all.

 


End file.
